Couch Slayer

First off, I’ve been sort of a bad person. I received some blog awards, and I didn’t acknowledge them here. It’s not that I’ve been too busy, but these blog awards are difficult to send back out into the world. I keep coming up with the lists of people I’d give the awards to, but then I forget and another month goes by. So that’s coming up, maybe over the weekend, we’ll see.

Today’s story is about Indiana, the couch eating dog.

Here’s a picture of him. Isn’t he sweet and cute? 

Indiana, couch slayer

But beneath that teddy bear like exterior lurks the heart of a couch eater. Well, actually, his palette is not so discerning as to have a preference. Oh no, he eats all manner of things from wallboard to rocks, and everything in between, and it is only by the grace of Cernunos that the dog still lives.

When we first brought this sweet dog home, he was everything a person could want in a dog. He was sweet with soft fur and strong personality. He quickly charmed the other two dogs of the house, and generally made himself at home. But then we went out for dinner with my parents.

When we came back our cute little teddy bear was lying on the floor, wagging his tail, looking much like the cat who ate the canary. Then we saw the first tuft of carpet. Then we saw another. Our horror only grew as we found a hole 8 feet wide and 8 feet long in the carpet. Everything was gone, the carpet the carpet pad; it even looked like someone had licked the cement slab. We just stood in horror staring at the hole in the carpet. Then someone said “What did he do with it? He didn’t eat it, did he?”

We searched, but found only a couple puffs of carpet fiber. He had actually consumed the vast majority of the carpet. *Sigh*

That weekend we tore out the carpet and laid down tile. $1000 (My peeps are awesome sauce when it comes to doing tile floors).

We thought that would solve the problem, I mean seriously, good luck eating tile flooring dog.

The next time he was left to his own devices, he chewed a hole through the wallboard. I patched it up with some putty, but I can still see it.

Floor boards? Chewy snacks.

Books? He just devours them. And not because they were just laying around. No, no, he went and pulled them off the book shelf and eviscerated them in the middle of the living room. I could have cried—okay, I did cry.

DVDs? They’re good for cleaning the teeth.

Plastic bags, thread, the sewing machine, the garbage, anything and everything, including things I had previously thought impossible to consume. I was wrong. When he ate rocks we took him to the vet, and she just laughed. Looking back at that moment, it was a lot like watching the nurses trying not to laugh when I said my daughter had stuffed cheerios up her nose.

Except the kid cost $15 to have her nose looked at. The dog: $1500.

For weeks we’d come home and there’d be a trail of detritus that started at the door, and we’d just follow it with dread. He could climb up onto the counters, so nothing was safe: Coffee maker, knives from the butcher block, dirty dishes, remote controls, power chords. Nothing was safe—I kept my laptop in a drawer or in my backpack.

And every time we’d come home, he’d just look at us like “Hi, I took care of the demon possessed throw rug you bought. Also, I think the tea pot may have been poisoned, so I ate it just to be sure.”

Having consumed every challenge known to dog kind, he set his sights higher: the couch. Surely no dog had ever eaten a whole couch. Well, the love seat actually. Now, I have to be truthful: I hated that couch set. It was black leather, and we’d really worn it out. There were some things that were great about it, but it was guilty by association. I’d written my master’s thesis while sitting in that couch, sticking to the cushions, and alternately melting or freezing depending on the time of year. It never looked clean, and it always looked frumpy at best, lounge lizard at worst.

But then we came home and there was a tiny tear in the back of the love seat. Indiana just wagged his tail, but we all knew it, he’d marked his next victim. The loveseat was a goner if we didn’t do something and fast. We went straight out and bought a slip cover (which we should have done long before, really). That night, he tore apart the slip cover, and in case we hadn’t figured out how he felt about it, he peed on the pile of torn canvas. Still, the couch had lived through the night. The next day he tore off a single panel and ate it. Just one. It was like he was savoring the couch.

We moved the couch up against a wall so he couldn’t get to the back panels. When we got home the next time, the couch was pulled away from the wall, and there sat Indiana looking smug, fat and happy. He’d eaten the entire back of the couch.

The next day, it was a cushion.

The day after, an arm.

It was like watching some horror movie aimed at living room furniture. For a while he was content to just eat the skin off the couch (great mother of science that sounds really twisted), but then he started to eat the stuffing. In one afternoon—actually we were only gone for an hour or so—he reduced what was left of the couch to a skeleton with a few scraggly bits of leather hanging off.

And we never found the pieces…

That’s not strictly speaking true, it’s just impolite to talk about where we found the pieces.

So yeah, Indiana the twenty thousand dollar dog. Maybe I’ll get a Chihuahua next time…